


These Irons are Mad Cold and Prodding Me

by 80x8



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-04
Updated: 2014-01-04
Packaged: 2018-01-07 11:56:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1119546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/80x8/pseuds/80x8
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Terezi wonders if things would be better had she died in Vriska’s place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Irons are Mad Cold and Prodding Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pinkandsatany](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkandsatany/gifts).



Vriska readied her feet against the lowest branch of a pastel tree, braced her claws on the trunk, and waited to spring like a stripebeast. Terezi was a ruthless FLARPer but Vriska knew that the one thing Terezi was too dependent on was her sight. Vriska would start out this session with cunning stealth.

Too bad she was much inexperienced in any tactic that wasn’t ostentatious, and teetered out of boredom on her perch. After several minutes passed, Vriska scowled. Maybe Terezi had thought of the same thing and was camped out a few trees over making the first 20 minutes of their roleplaying session a ridiculous stalemate. The troll shimmied down the tree and decided that bold and brash suited her best and she shall never again try any alternative. Terezi would have to realize this soon as well. True war-women charged their troops ahead with brute force and were in cahoots in lady luck.

Lady luck was busy bashing in the head of other enemies today however, as the second Vriska’s boots touched solid ground a shaft narrow as a whip and long as her forearm shot into the trunk right between her horns.

“Drat, I was trying to knock one of those off,” Terezi, no, Redglare, jested. “You were awfully distracted up there Miss Mindfang. Stop thinking about kissing boys! We’ve got games for girls to play!”

Vriska, like a good opponent, de-inventoried a spark sphere and lodged it in Terezi’s plush hood before Terezi dodged behind a trunk to reload a shot-sling trap. Terezi yelped and hopped a few feet and removed her now dangerous cape in time to meet cane-to-sword with her FLARPing nemesis Mindfang.

\--

“Sit still blueblood! You’re obstructing the justice. The justice of having ferocious horns!”

“You’re using the dull side of the file dumbass! Flip it turnways!”

“Oh. Oh god damnit! That’s why it’s been taking me hours to get my points done!”

“You might as well be blind, you dumb grub.”

“I’ll cull you with the dull side in a second.”

“If you ever kill me,” Vriska mind reached for a punishment with plausibility, “I’ll haunt you!”

“I bet it’ll happen, and I bet you’ll deserve it! Heheheh,” Terezi confirmed to herself, and uncapped the horn polish. When the day came, she’d be ready to cull Vriska. In the meantime, they were going to make each other look battle ready. “You can’t haunt me if you deserved it.”

\--

“Oooh, scary ghost,” Dave remarked at Terezi’s crude chalk drawing on the floor next to can town’s fire truck. “Eight mouths to wail at you for setting the beloved family armoire on fire. Been in the family for generations but you just had to lay down some sick fires on it like the rude MC you be.”

Eight eyes, not mouths. Terezi smells the ghost’s eight pupils gaping back at her. Terezi pulls a quarter from her capchalogue but doesn’t flip it, rather grips it between her fingers and traces the texture. She thinks, as she has often since the day the meteor embarked towards the new session, about asking Dave to help her fix a decision in the past. Ask if playing this game out in the alpha timeline was really worth it. But instead of asking like she wants to, Terezi thinks about finding Gamzee later to let of some pent up emotion in the unhealthiest way she can think of.

She can’t bring herself to sacrifice the futures of the friends she has in this timeline to go back and redo the showdown. Terezi feels selfish that she can’t stay mentally stable for the friends she has here and now, just because of one friend death. Especially since that one friend was a lousy manipulative bitch. Especially since Terezi was currently filling one of her quadrants with a clown that killed three times as much as that lousy manipulative bitch. Terezi was using him as a punching bag instead of culling him, as he actually deserves.

Surely, if Vriska was the one still here instead of her, she wouldn’t play this out so pathetically.

\--

In another universe, Vriska presses the pads of her fingertips hard against the surface against an empty table, in an empty room. And she watches her fingers spread out in distracted concentration. Not even John could have been one of the pink monkeys that wound up on the meteor with the rest of the pathetic troll gang, just a mopey knight and a new seer who was practically useless. Not to say light was a useless aspect though! It kicked ass! Rose was just simply not up to par with Vriska, who obviously had a better title to operate it with.

Speaking of said seer, Rose enters from a connecting corridor from the other side of the room, Kanaya in tow, but no one else follows. Karkat and Dave probably won’t show to Vriska’s called meeting again, licking their emotional wounds together instead. They couldn’t even be grateful that she killed of that sufferable clown for them as a crude apology for the murder of Terezi. Once again, pathetic boys leave it up to the ladies to plan and conquer.

After turning the tide of the battle of wits between her and her scrooge sister a fourth of a sweep ago, Vriska was subdued left and right by trolls and gods before she could fly off and slay Jack Noir like she was supposed to. Honestly, she had let them. She loathes admitting it to herself, but she couldn’t fight against the others afterwards. Watching Terezi fall affected her much more than she predicted and she hates herself for her pathetic surrender every day.

Kanaya sits at the head of the table on the opposite side. “You shouldn’t call these strategy meetings so often, Vriska, we never get very far.”

“We, well at least I do, plan things all the time! What else are we supposed to do on this forsaken meteor? Sit on our asses and wipe our noses like the boys do?”

“We need to wait till I see something new again,” Rose says, poising herself on a seat to Vriska’s left.

“You still haven’t!? I sent you to the roof to meditate with the horror-gods-whatsits for eight hours yesterday!”

“Yes, it was quite boring and didn’t work. I can’t force these things. After three hours Dave came up and we shared a few glasses of our newest collaboration,” Rose smiles, reminiscing, and de-inventories a bottle to hand to Vriska. “We’re actually quite proud of it.”

Kanaya’s eyes follow the bottle passing from hand to hand. “We can’t make new plans without any new information to work with. It’s a game of patience for now.”

Patience wasn’t one of Vriska’s strong skills. Patience meant waiting, waiting meant thinking, thinking meant dwelling, and dwelling meant Vriska would soon be thinking about Terezi. Terezi didn’t deserve to die at all. Vriska knows this and tries to keep her mind busy with other things because dwelling on the past won’t get this pathetic crew anywhere. She wants to drive that principal into Dave and Karkat. Sure, she misses Terezi like they do, but she’s working regardless isn’t she? Or she should be.

Vriska needs irons in the fire now more than ever, anything to keep her mind occupied. But supreme forces are punishing her and saying no. Go sit in the corner and think of what you’ve done. Dwell. Hopefully one of these days Karkat will man up enough to stab Vriska though the guts and give her a just death. Vriska still can’t figure out why he didn’t cull her the day it happened. It fucking makes sense.

Argh, no! Vriska is a vital player and intrinsic to making plans around here.

Vriska handles the wine bottle in her hands, observes the crude label (Miss Apple Fucker), and visualizes bashing Rose in the head with it and spilling her brains out. But she and Rose aren’t black and that would be unwarranted (just like Terezi’s murder, she did- ARGH!). Vriska sends a look across the table to Kanaya, the person she actually is in a black relationship with, non-verbally notifying the sylph that later Vriska needs to let of some steam in the unhealthiest way possible. Though, Kanaya hardly belongs in the quadrant with her. After all, Vriska suspects that Kanaya indulges the relationship in the first place just because Kanaya pities Vriska enough. Vriska loathes Kanaya so much for that.

Surely, if Terezi was the one still here instead of her, she wouldn’t let play this out so pathetically.

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, man. I am not a writer. This is my first fanfiction, first fiction at all actually! I have never tried writing much beyond papers for school. But I really wanted to try out a medium I'm unfamiliar with. And I really wanted to participate in Ladystuck and am pumped that I did because it's a cool event! I hope my gift is up to par and hope the recipient enjoys it! Thanks for letting me participate.


End file.
